Crypto Markets Today: Bitcoin Holds Steady Near $23K; Gemini’s Job Cuts Continue

In at least its third round of layoffs since June, crypto exchange Gemini is shedding another 10% of its staff, according to an internal message viewed by The Information. This article originally appeared in Crypto Markets Today, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter diving into what happened in today’s crypto markets. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.

• Gemini has been swept up in the bankruptcy of crypto lender Genesis Global Capital and has been unable to pay out funds to its Earn account holders. Gemini’s founders, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, have engaged in a Twitter war with Digital Currency Group, the parent company of Genesis, over the $900 million owed to Earn customers. (DCG is also the parent company of CoinDesk.)
• “It was our hope to avoid further reductions after this summer, however, persistent negative macroeconomic conditions and unprecedented fraud perpetuated by bad actors in our industry have left us with no other choice but to revise our outlook and further reduce headcount,” wrote Cameron Winklevoss, the president and co-founder of Gemini, in the internal message.
• Gemini had previously cut 10% of its staff in June, followed by more layoffs in July, according to TechCrunch. Gemini’s headcount was down overall from 1,100 at the start of 2022 to between 650 and 700 people near the end of the year, according to The Information.
• Many large crypto companies, including Coinbase, Crypto.com, Blockchain.com and ConsenSys, have cut staff in recent weeks amid the ongoing crypto winter. CoinDesk estimates nearly 27,000 jobs have been lost across the industry since April of last year.
• Gemini declined to comment on this story.

Bitcoin (BTC): The largest cryptocurrency by market value was recently trading at around $22,950, up 2.3% for the day. BTC moved sideways earlier Monday and briefly reached as high as $23,158 in early afternoon trading hours (ET) before retreating. According to data from CoinShares, short-bitcoin investment products saw inflows of $25.5 million last week, the largest amount since last July, when $51 million went into those products in one week. Equities closed up amid continued hopes that the U.S. central bank will ratchet back its hawkish monetary policy. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 2% while the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) were up 1.1% and 0.7%, respectively. Ether (ETH): ETH followed BTC’s pattern, rising 0.4% to recently to trade at $1,630. Ethereum’s Shanghai hard fork will begin this spring. Developers said they had successfully created a copy of the blockchain – known as a “shadow fork” – to provide a testing environment. FTX’s FTT Token: FTT has rallied nearly 150% this month as a bull revival in the broader market triggered a short squeeze in the battered cryptocurrency. Data tracked by Kaiko Research shows a balanced order book in Binance’s FTT-BUSD market, with the number of buy orders for 20,000 FTT or more now matching similar-sized sell orders. FTT previously crashed 96% in November, hitting a low of 81 cents as its parent exchange went bust. As of publication time, FTT was trading at $2.2, up 8% for the day, according to data from CoinGecko. Axie Infinity (AXS): Play-to-earn giant Axie Infinity’s AXS cryptocurrency is rallying despite the impending unlocking of millions of dollars worth of tokens. AXS was trading as high as a four-month high of $13.94 earlier Monday before it had settled back to around $12.6 as of publication time. It was up 13% in the past 24 hours.